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STATE OF THE UNION. 



rK t^v <3 ^ 'Speech .of the 



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HON. D. C. DE JARNETTE, 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 14, 1861. 




The House haring nnder consideration the report from the Select Committee of 
Thirty-three— 

Mr. DE JARNETTE said: .— - — ^ ^^ . 

3Ir- Spkakkr : There are times when I am contemplating the history of my coun- ^ ^^ 
try — its rise, progress, and rapid development — when the picture becomes so pleas- 
ing, and I am so filled with hope and delight, that I am lifted above the raging ele- 
ments which have now eo nearly destroyed it ; and from such a stand-point, view the 
grandest system of government ever yet devised by human agency for the happiness 
of man. 

I have gone back to the earliest period of our history, when a few bold hearts first 
penetrated the dark forests, to find the home of the savage, and share with him his 
freedom, sooner than submit to the tyranny and oppression of the Old Woild. They 
were guided by the sparks of liberty which they had seen emitted by the concussion 
of the dynasties of the Old World ; which, as they arose, were carried by the winds 
of heaven to the shores of America. 

It was here, sir, guided by the Unseen, and protected by the arm which they never 
felt but to praise, they reared an altar of liberty, around which soon stood the op- 
pressed of every land, who soon so replenished its fiies that its flames licked the 
clouds, the bright effulgence of which cast a shadow under the thrones of tyranny 
and oppression throughout the earth. 

In viewing it from this stand-point, I have seen no North, no South ; I have looked 
upon the whole, and been proud that all of it was my country- 1 have forgctten, and 
expelled from my mind, nil grievances of which the t^outli now so justly complains, 
and viewed my country as it should be, and not as it is. Mr. Sjicakei-, I am proud of 
what it has already accomplished ; but with the eye of faith I pemtiate the distant 
future, and behold one hundred million freemen, whose sublime destiny it is to break 
the chains of tyianny, to feed the hungry, and clothe tlie naked over the earih. 

Sir, we have reached that point in our national progress when every step we take 
is felt throughout the earth. The eyes of the world are upon us. To us beloiii: the 
jealousy, hate, and envy of the dynasties of the earth. This they will not admit, even 
to themselves or to each other; but the foot of oppre.«sion is raised ; the reins ot Gov- 
ernment are loosed ; and the oppressed throughout the earth begin to recover their 
long-lost liberties. 

This is what our free institutions have accomplished ; this is what we have accomp- 
lished, without regard to any other object than our own development. 

Still, the eyes of the world are upon us; our movements arc watched and felt 
throughout the world. 

When we stepped from the banks of the Mississippi to the Pacific ocean, the earth 
moved heavily on its axis, because its balance was disturbed. All Europe telt the 
shock ; and now feel and know that another center must be found, around which they 
in turn must revolve. Nor was its influence confined to Europe ; it penetrated .\si'a 
to the Celestial Empire; aroused the slumbering millions in their stiong-walled cities 
and caused their gales to creak under the accumulated rust of centuries. 

Indeed, far beyond, in the remote kingdom of Japan, a hundicd million more were 
aroused to shake ofi' the dust of centuries, and again to walk the earth. 

It was that step which (if this Union wera not doomed to perish) wotild make this 



2 



comiiry the center of t])e trade of the earth, by Kiving us'the control nf +I.0 u,.^ f 

the eight hundred .nilh-on people of Asia ; a'trad/whifh hn^f Len e^t'ed^ Eurone 

for more than SIX hundred years; a trade which 'has been so fnutfirthat it ha ?n \'y,Ar. 

turn, made every nation v.hich er.joyed it at the time the greatest Power t e eakh ^ ^^ 

It was to aeconnnodate that trade that Columbus started on his voyage of dis^ovel 
ry ; he w.shed to hnd a nearer way to India, and in the line of that mofe d rec wlr 
he stumbled on th.s c-onrinent. It was to that trade Spain owed her grea ne4 he; 
wealth, and her vast donnmon. From Spain it fell to Denn.ark, which kingdom held 
It for more than a hur.dred years, and by it grew to the {.osition of the then mo t for 
midable Power of the earth. England was attracted by 'the glittering pize and bv 
diplomacy and by threats wrenched it from the gr.sp of that kin ..don. Profithur h"! 
the errors of Spain and Denmark, England, by the most .i.anticlSust.^i Sve' 
ment winch cur.es the pages of history, subjugated one hundred million of the peopL 
of India, and, with their own money, has hired armies to keep them in the dust Since 
then, she, in order to guar.l it effectually, until recently never suffered any natio of 
Europe to hold a navy comparable to her own. Standing over France, as soon as ha 
nation could equip a navy at all calculated to cope with hev, she has in;ariabrv cashed 
t She has stood with one foot on the Danish Belt and the other on the DaXel 
feast h' the eIsL ''"'•■ ""'""'' ''" ^"^'^ ^''''' ''' ^^e Russian bear from tie rich 

Thus, for nearly two hundred years, has England enjoyed uninterruptedly the trade 
of the eight hundred millions of Asia. ' ^uij uie udue 

Since the purchase of- Louisiana by the United States, England has been uneasy 
Napoleon I, when he sold that country west of the Mississippi to us gave as a easo" 
that he could not hold it ; that England, to guard her trade in the' Ealt' would wUh 
her immense navy take it; that he wished the young giant of America to poss;ss it 
higXt tilSe.'"' '' "''' '' "' ^'"''"''' '^'''' ^^■""'^' '-eak England's power by poissl 

I will not stop here to show all the impediments which England has thrown across 
our path to prevent our march to the Pacific. She began with a proposition for the 
joint occupancy of our Pacific shore. That was agreed to ; but it soon resulted Z hS 
clam, to the only harbor on that coast owned bv the United States. The riirht of 
search which she asserted, and which resulted in the war of 181:^, was instituted with 
he v.cvy of breaking the j,res^ic,e of our power, a..d giving her the occupation of As- 
toria the only li^ubor on the Pacific. The war con.menced by the seizure of that 

arClKMit " '* ""' ^'°'"* ^'''^'^'"^ '''^"^ ^^'^ ^'^'**-^ "^'P'^^*^'^ was made 

Failing in this, she now holds all the South American States u.ider bonds which 
they dare not disregard, to prevent an American vessel, in time of war from enter- 
ing their ports, eyen for shelter. When the transit of the Isthmus is found practica- 
ble, she appears at that point and undertakes to cont.-ol that. When in I850 we 
proposed to const.uct a lailroad to the Pacific, she immediately begins the construc- 
tion of a road from Newfoundland to Puget Sound, and has, through the polar cold 
constructed fifteen hundred miles of that road. And still more recently, impelled bv 
the spur of ou.' rapid advancement, she has purchased an island in the'Pacitic in our 
track tq L.dia, Ui)on which she is this day building a Gibraltar almost in sight of our 

Ui ihi.=;. -^ir, will avail not ; >,he isstriving agninst what the finger of destiny has 
■'■ ■ u'" J"'" 0";^-"comphshn,ent. Sir. civilizat on, knowledge, and commerce started 
in -he hasi. Ihey have progressed and are piogrcssing westward. When thev shall 
have reached the ut.ern.o,t vn-g.. of the f'Hcific shore, they must retrooade; aiid the 
sublm,e_(iesiiny of retu i.ing thes^ ble.-^sings to their ancient seats will 'be ours Sir 
the ge.nus ot .\me.Mc:. has l.ft the .ock-bound coast of New England and taken its pol 
siiion on the sho.e.of the Pacific; and there it will work oui'our mighty destiny by 
placing in our control the trade of the world- . ' 

Mr. Speaker, caii there be a heart so dead as not to beat with exultant pride when 
contemplating such a destiny for his ONvn native land? Sir, since I have been thus 
hopeful of tue des^tiny of my country, I have known that the accomplishment of that 
destiny could be hastened or delayed by mutu.al good offices, good feeling, and fra- 
ternal regard between the North and South, or the rever.-e. 

_ I have, sir, watched with much anxiety the storm-cloud which I have seen gather- 
ing and advancmg from the Korth for ten years past. I have noted its every move- 



3 

ment, and, heuce not unexpectedly, seen its darkness increase, and heard its loud 
thunders rattle. I have known that this dark and threatenincr tornado wouhi spread 
it8 fury and hurl its thunder bohs on the devoted licads of my people. Conscious of 
rectitude, they have not souscht, nor will they, seek, to avoid its fury ; because they 
know they are clothed in the armor of Virginia's sovereifsfiity, which cannot be pene- 
trated. Let me warn you, therefore, not to misinterpret her present position. It is 
butj,he hush before the storm. She, in her wisdom, has called her people together, 
because their liberties and her sovereignty are assailed. Rcspec.t the one, and recog- 
nize the other, and all may yet bo well. But if not, every sword in Virginia will leap 
from its scabbard, and flash defiance to a world in arms. There are no submissionists 
there. The North has now become maddened by prosperity. The empire of com- 
merce we have cheerfully conceded to them. We of the South have exulted in their 
success, though it has been the result, in a great degree, of a tax on our labor. Still 
we would be content if we were allowed to live in security and repose. We have 
cheerfully divided the products of each day's labor at the South with you of the North; 
we have never attempted to disturb your social and domestic institutions, or taught 
others so to do ; we have been faithful to every engagement, and performed every 
obligation imposed on us by the Constitution. 

Sir, no man now lives, or has ever lived, who has said, or can say, that we of the 
South, though heretofo"e controlling the Government, have ever withheld a rio-ht 
from or inflicted a wrong on the North. Can you of the North say that you have ful- ■ 
filled all the obligations imposed upon you by the Constitution ? Have you at the 
North, while enjoying a tax which we impose on our labor for your beneflt, eve ma- 
nifested the slightest interest in our welfare 'i Have you ever been as considerate of 
our welfare as you have been of that of your foreign neighbors in Canada? Along 
your border, with them, you have lived in peace and friendship. Along your border, 
with us, there has not been a moment of repose for twenty years. You have through- 
out the North societies organized with no other object than to employ men to excite 
your own people to war on your brethren of the South. It cannot be slaA'ery that vou 
war on ; because slavery exists in its worst form in sight of your own shore — in Cuba. 

I have never heard of your sending an emisary to Cuba, though you have more fre- 
quent intercourse with Havana than you have with any of our ports. Who ever 
heard that you have ever made an eflbrt to rob a master on that island of his slave ? 
Who ever heaid one word said by your most malignant Abolitionist against slavery 
as it exists anywhere else, except with your brethren of the South V From their hands 
you have received nothing but kindness. In return you send emissaries, educated 
among you, to rob, poison, burn, and, with the assassin's dagger, to murder our 
people. 

For twenty years we have submitted to this ; we loved the Union because we have 
been taught to love it. It was the work of our fathers ; and if it could be preserved 
in the spirit in which they made it, it would live fresh in eternal youth, and exempt 
from mutability and decay. But, sir, it exists no longer. Its spirit has fled ; and when 
in the spirit laud, from the tomb it shall arise to testify against the authors of its un- 
timely fate. The South, with conseious imiocenee, will await the sentence because it 
will be just; and the North will be pronounced guilty of the deep damnation of this 
taking oft'. 

I have known. My. Speaker, for ten years that dissolution must come. I have seen 
the irrepre8sii)Ie conflict between labor and capital at the North, and known that it 
could but result in favor of the former, inasmuch as that labor poss .sseii the revolu- 
tionary power there, to wit : the elective franchise. W^herever, sir, th'TC is free com- 
petition between labor and capital, and that labor is armed with the unrestrieted right 
to vote, the labor being always in the majority, nnist .sooner or later so control ihe 
law-making power as to hold the capital subject to its will. That lalior has for many 
years past controlled the law-making power of New En-jland. It has now gained con- 
trol of the law-making power in many States west of the Hudson ; ami in liu^ last pres- 
idential contest, it aspired to, and obtained, the control of the law-making power of 
this Government. Wherever there is free competition of labor and capital, and that 
labor vindicates its power to control the Government, liberty cannot long survive. 
But the wor.^t form of despotism will exist as long as there is capital left upon which 
it can feed. When this fails, the only result which can follo\V is, for such a people to 
return to barbarism. 

Thus, society at the North is now pregnant with the seeds of its own destruction. 



ris only salvation is a stronger Governmpnt, and a restriction of the electlTe francbije. 
This is' not f^peculative tiipory. but fact; it is not wild imaginings, but history. The 
8tnndin<^ armies of the Old World are maintained to keep labor from warring on ca- 
pital; not by contiollin^ the law-making power, for that labor has not the elective 
franchise, and hence cannot aspire to the forms of justice to legalize it8 robberies; 
but those armies are maintained to protect tliat capital from mob violence. What 
protection has your capital from the legalized robbery to which it is even now some- 
times subjected ? Does not this free labor now eet at naught your State decrees, if 
they are annoying to it ? Has it not scaled the ramparts of the Federal Government, 
destroyed the Constitution, enthroned the higher law in its stead, and justified such 
action by alleging that their own State laws, which they had made to aerne themselves, 
required them to despise the authority of the General Government? It is the free 
suffrage and free labor of the North which now controls the press, the bar, the schools, 
and the pulpit. It is the free labor of the North which has invaded the sanctity of 
God's altar, and compelled its ministers to acknowledge its divinity by dethroning Je- 
hovah and worshipping Belzcbub. It is the free labor at the North which has in- 
vaded the highest judicial tribunal of justice, destroying its prerogatives, and teach- 
ing men to despise its decrees. Sir, it has so shattered the framework of society, that 
society itself exists only in an inverted order at the North. Capital at the North for 
a long time waged an unequal contest with labor. It looked then to the Government 
and fonnd that impotent for aid. For momentary security, it seemed to sympathize 
in the objects of the fanatics, and to point to the institutions of the South as fit ob- 
jects for attack. Fatal delusion! They not only introduced the Trojan horse into 
their counting-houses, but drove away their best customers, by their efforts to enslave 
them. 

At the South, our new republic will have no euch element of discord. Capital there 
owns all labor which, from its nature, so lowers the man as to make him unfit for so- 
ciety and self-government. Thus capital and labor in our new republic will work in 
beautiful harmony ; and it is thus that African slavery furnishes the only basis upon 
which republican liberty can bo preserved. 

You may ask me if we have not free labor at the South. I answer, yes, in its na- 
tural form ; not warring on capital, but sustained by it. We are proud of that labor. 
It is cnligthened. It constitutes the main pillar in our structure. It is the sword of 
our defense, because it is elevated and dignified by the conservative influence of Afri- 
can slavery. It will thus, in our new republic, be the only place on the globe where 
free suffrage and free labor constitute conservative elements in the structure of re- 
publican liberty. It will be there alone where free labor will not be in antagonism to 
capital; because capital owns the only labor which can be oppressed by it, and be- 
cause labor, being the capital, will be, as such, carefully preserved. 

Thus African slavery constitutes'the keystone of the arch which supports the only 
structure which free labor, together with free suffrage, will not and cannot destrov. 
It must not be supposed by the people of the North, that the free labor of the South 
can ever desire to disturb the relation of master and slave ; on the contrary they will 
and must, from necessity, defend it, as it is alone on the profit of slave labor that free 
labor finds employment and lives in peace and plenty. It is thus that African ylave- 
ry elevates and dignifies the free labor of the South, by freeing it of all menial serv- 
ice. Thus relieved, that labor constitutes a valuable social and political element in 
our Republic, by working with mutual dependence in beautiful harmony with capital, 
consolidating in one compact mass and brotherhood all the white men' of the South. 
Sir, this system of ours, thus purged from all opposing elements, cannot be over- 
thrown ; it will go on to prosper with accumulating vigor ; for by it the labor of the 
white man is freed from the oppression of capital. 

It is vain, then, for the free labor of the North, by the exercise of its revolutionary 
power, to attempt fm-thi-r the corruption of the free labor of tiie South. That labor, 
Mr. Speaker, has higher aspirations and holier purposes to accomplish; it.s mission, 
sir. is to bui'd up, not to destroy an empire : to observe all the restraints of law and 
the Constitution, and not to despise the restraints of law and trample in the (hwt the 
ConsMtution ; to protect society by carefully guarding the pulpit, not to destroy so- 
ciety by corrupting it. The ficc labor of the North now seeks the destruction of this 
beautiful system of Government. It knowH the secret of our strength, and has judged 
rightly where the power of this Samson is. They have planted their batteries againat 
the institution of slavery. They know it to be the Redau of our Rystem ; they know 



\t* conserrative power, and as long as it exists they know the free labor of the South 
cannot be corrupted. For this reason has slavery been assailed ; and now that you 
have got it in the "course of ultimate extinction," you are resolved to use your pow- 
er, and we are determined to resist your authority. 

What cause do you allege for thus warring on us ? Have we of the South ever 
withheld a right given you by the Constitution, or inflicted a wrong ? Have we not 
contributed to your success and rejoiced in your prosperity V Did not Virginia, (may 
God bless her in this hour,) in order to destroy jealousy between the North and South, 
and give peace to tiie country, give to the North the empire of the Northwest? And 
now, in this hour of her peril, she turns her eyes to that powerful empire, the fruit of 
her womb ; huiiianity would apply the full breast of that youthful exuberance to the 
mouth of its atfiicted parent ; but tyranny would, Nero like, march to the throne over 
the prostrate form of its own motiier. You, too, Nero like, when your proud Ca])itol 
is being consumed by tiie torch which your hands have applied, are reveling amid the 
ruins which you made. In the name of an outraged and oppressed people — in the 
name of freemen who know their rights and will defend them, and in the name of a 
just God, I charge you to let this parricidal sin jmss from you. You are now about 
to assume the reins of Government over what you have left of the Americ^ui Union. 
You, as you know, have acquired that power, pledged to the accomplishment of a 
single object : the ultimate extinction of our cherished domestic institution — African 
slavery. 

Before we surrender the authority by which you are to govern us, we only ask that 
you will give us gurantees by which you cannot deprive us of that protection which 
the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted, not by us, but by the Supreme 
Court, guarantees to us. This you refuse to do. You obtain power by pledges to war 
on the institutions of the South. We ask you to throw away the weapons wliich you 
have drawn for our destruction before we yield to your autliority. This you con. 
temptuously refuse to do; and then, sir, in the memory of Virginia's history, you ap- 
peal to her to prenerve the Union ! 

Then, sirs, beware : Virginians will defend their liberties, and preserve unrestricted 
the sovereignty of their State. They and the gallant men of the South will not sur- 
vive their Hberties. They were born freemen, and will never die slaves. 

While all propositions for an honorable adjustment have come from the injured, out- 
raged, and insulted section, we of that section have felt that they should come from 
the assailing party. We have felt this to be wounding to our pride, and, in some de- 
gree, tarnishing to our honor. However, it was a sacrifice upon the altar of our coun- 
try, and it was cheerfully made. Wv owed this to the memory of our fathers; we 
owed this to our generous constituents, who would give their lives to preserve the 
Union in its primitive purity ; we owed it to humanity to prevent our laud from being 
torn in civil strife and drenched in fraternal blood. We have discharged every duty 
that honor, patriotism, and fidelity to our people demanded. In short, we have done 
everything but surrender the liberties of our people. This we will never do. I, for 
one, sir, would sooner see this Union shattered into atoms, never again to be reunited, 
than to return to my people, and tell them that we had saved the Union, but enslaved 
them, 

I have, Mr, Speaker, in contemjilating the new arrangement of the States which 
now must be made, outstripped the wheel of time, and viewed our southern republic 
as it will be seen in 18()4. Then the machinery of our govcrimient will be in full op- 
eration and perfected. The most skillful mechanist will not be able to detect the 
slightest inei|ua!ity in its bearingn. Its movements will be silent, but powerful. Its 
balance-whci 1 will be African slavery, so well adjusted that its power will be irresist- 
ible, because its motion will be perpetual. Then will tlie southern States be united 
in bonds of perpetual union ; then will our peoiile be united in interest, in heart, and 
sympathy; then will v\c prosper as a peojile nover before luive prospered; because 
our labor will be freed from taxation and the product of that labor will have no com- 
petition. 

If, then, we have failed to pr^*erve the Union by making, in the nanie of our peo- 
ple, every snciilice except that oTthcir libtrties, we will have acconiiilished this much. 

What, Mr. Speaker, will the Kepublicans of this House, whiii they rttnru to their 
people, cari'y wiiii them to comp<'nsate for the ruin and havoc which they have crea- 
ted? To them will belong the responsibility of disrupting this once happy Union. 
To them will be attached the awful responsibility of exciting thirty uiillion of the hap- 



6 

piest people on God's earth to forget that they are brethren and with all the destruc- 
tive machinery of f^rira-visasjed war, to destroy each other in civil strife. On them 
will fall the cui'ses of niillious at the North, whose trade they have destroyed, and 
whose homes they have made desolate. It is on you, Republicans, will fall the curses 
of the widowed mother who can no lonpfer find bread for her starving children. Go 
to your crowded cities, not to the gilded palaces of your inerchant princes, but to the 
lanes and alleys, and when you hear the cries of thousands, frantic with hunger and 
despair, and behold here a mother with her innocent children clasped around her in 
the agony of death from starvation, and th«re another tearing her bosom because it 
can no longer afford nourishment to her dying infant, will you see the result of your 
devotion to your party platform. You will have saved your party, but you will have 
lost your country. You will have vindicated your devotion lo the negro by disre- 
gardin.g the voice of humanity and the dcerees of Heaven. This is what you have 
already done. If, then, the prospect of civil war, which you have created, has done 
all, and much more than all this, what, I ask, must be the misery, agony, and death 
which twenty-five million brave people will inflict on each other '? 

Sir, when the flames of civil war have swept over our once happy land, from St. 
John's to the Hio (irande, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific; when your cities and 
ours no longer resound with the busy hum of industry, because they will be the first 
victims which the relentless mouths of cannon will demand f when our beautiful coun- 
try, where innocence resides and virtue sits enthroned, shall return to its primitive 
occupants — because nothing save the hyena can live amid such scenes of desolation 
and death — then you mil behold the work of your own hands. If you have not yet 
seen enough to make you pause before you declare war on the South, and thus invoke 
on your heads the wrath of humanity and the vengeance of Heaven, those of you who 
survive when it shall have been ended, will witness a scene which will melt your 
hearts, tho\igh they may be harder than adamant. . When yon are called on to wit- 
ness the procession of ten million mourners, and hear their cries for those who have 
fallen in battle, and hear that mighty multitude, with one voice, proclaim you the 
author of all their affliction, you will, indeed, cry that the rocks may hide and the 
hills may cover you from their sight. All this wiU you inflict on your country and 
yourselves sooner than let slavery alone. 

It is an institution for which you are not responsible, and about which you know 
nothing. You say it is wrong, and you will put it in the course of ultimate extinc- 
tion, bec;iuse slaves are sometimes treated with cruelty. That they are sometiines, 
but rarely, treated with cruelty, I will admit ; but such acts are punished by law, and 
punished by society, with great severity. Still, I know that there is more humanity, 
there is more unalloyed contentment and happiness, among the slaves of the South, 
than any laboring population on the globe. Where else but at the South are the la- 
borers lun-sed when sick, and taken care of when tliey get too old to work ■* Where 
but at the South is it the interest of capital to provide food for the families of labor- 
ers when they are young and helpless? It then being the interest of capital that the 
slave and his family should be well cared for in sickness and in health, what stronger 
reason can be given that he will not be abused V It is this interest in his labor that 
you would deprive liin\ of. 

After you do this, have you not deprived him of his home, and all the comforts he 
now enjoys? Will you give him another home, and provide him other cnmforts? 
You know you will not. You will not do this to your neighbors of your own race, 
aud the starving poor among you ; but you will stand by and see the negro, whom 
vou have deprived of his iiome, driven, by the free white labor of the North, from 
every occupation of honest toil. 

If* then, the merit of your opposition to slavery is that yon would abolish an in.sti- 
tution which is sometimes oppressive, go ho;ue and abolish your banking system; go 
home and destroy your magnificent churches, because some of your ministers have 
l)een bad men; and go home and abolish the institution of marriage ; because I know 
that, for every master who cruelly treats his slave, there are two v/hite men at the 
North who torture and murder their wives. We knCj^vv that it is not because you love 
the slave, or desire to benefit his condition, that you' thus war on the South ; because 
when you have enticed him from his happy home, we have seen you, like the croco- 
dile, mingle your tears with the blood of your victim. We know it is done to keep 
the nortliern mind in agitation, never permitting it to settle down on your own pro- 
ductive elements of domestic discontent. But for this agitation at the North, society 



could not'stand the shock. The revolutionary element at the North coustitutes no 
part of that society. That element now controls the law-making power, and thus has 
the semblance of justice for its action. It is thus that the capital of Boston is held 
subject to its command. 

As the best meaTis of defense against this mighty power, which knows no control 
but its will, society at the North is divided. There arc those who, to avoid offense, have 
declined to take part in local elections, as shown by the thousands of slumbering votes 
in the States east of the Hudson. There are others, who, still having hopes of con- 
trolling it, having joined in, and desire so to direct it as to prevent any disaster to 
themselves or the country. For several years, they did hold the reins of restraint, 
and so checked its movements as to prevent injury. But now, it has burst the dams 
and levees with which you for a time restrained it, and, by its resistless flood, sweeps 
away and destroys all who oppose it. Communities at the North, or f'ven their State 
governments cannot resist its march. Nothing at the South can now resist it, but 
State sovereignties; and each State must throw this protection around their people, 
or they are lost. 

I have, Mr. Speaker, attempted to show the appreciation of those I represent for 
the Union. I know of none who would not even rejoice to perpetuate it as it was 
made by our fathers. I have shown them that it was not because they loved the 
Union less, but their liberties more, that they have made up their minds to leave it, 
unless you give them such guarantees as will insure them safety. I have shown you 
that the South has never, though smarting under insults and injuries, retaliated,'" be- 
cause she had observed the restraints of the Constitution. That instrument has never 
been wounded by a southern hand or agen(;;-y. It has alwajs been held sacred by 
our people ; and now, finding that they cannot live peaceably with you of the North, 
they will quietly leave your company. They have made no threats; they propose 
no violence to you. In secession they assail no one, threaten no one ; it is a remedy 
which is purely defensive, and not aggressive, because it is passive and not active . 

Your party desire to get rid of slavery, because you say that the moral influence of 
the world is against slavery, and by your contact with it are compromised. We pro- 
pose quietly to relieve you of any contact or association with it. Thus, to preserve 
your refined sensibilities, we propose to take slavery out of tb.e Union, and give you 
relief. And now that the cotton States have done this, and the border slave States 
are going to follow their example, and thus do what you have been trying to do for 
tw^enty years ; you get into a violent rage, and call the gods to witness that you will 
whip us into submission, because we will not let you do it in your own way. If you 
of the North would pause and reflect for one moment, you would see the ridiculous 
position in which you thus place yourselves before the world. But you will not, you 
cannot stop. You are impelled by a power which you cannot resist. It is the power 
of England, exerted on the revolutionary element of the North, which cannot and 
will not permit you to pause, now that the object which England so devoutly wishes 
for is so near its accomplishment. This Union must be destroyed, or England will 
soon lose her hold on the trade of Asia. England has made every effort to check our 
advancement and development, because she knew we were now her only rivals for 
commerce. 

Since the declaration of Sir Robert Peel — made in advocacy of the appropriation of 
$100,000,000 to emancipate the negroes in the West Indies — that "this was the best 
investment ever made for the overthrow of American institutions, " England has con- 
tinued to agitate this abolition of slavery, with a view of destroying our power by 
dividing us. England knows that our commercial tonnage is greater than her own, 
and is rapidly increasing and that the time for decisive action has come. By her 
gold-, as well as by agitatiiig this anti-slavery sentiment, she obtained great ascendency 
over the revolutiom;ry elements of the North. No man doubts but that vast sums of 
England's gold, drawn from the attenuated fingers of her slaving poor, are sent here 
to keep alive the flames of fanaticism in which alone the political salamanders of the 
North can live. The visits of Fred Douglass and William H. Seward to England some- 
times become m cessary to keep alive and excite the sometimes slundjering masses of 
their followers. England by way of a spur to their movements, occasionally confers 
the honor of knighthood on some sable swain, and by way of variety insults our min- 
ister for the amusement of the gentleman from Africa. 

This, sir, is not the result of an abolition sentiment in England, as abundantly shown 
by her unwillingness to force Spain to execute a treaty long since made, to abolish 



slaVery in all her possessions. Nor is it because she respects the rights of men or 
their freedom ; bccaiue she is to-day engaged in the coolie trade, by which she con- 
signs white men to most cruel and perpetual bondage. But it is because by this means 
alone she can hope to break the power of her most dangerous lival for the trade of 
the East. Cannot the people of the North, now^ on the verge of the precipice, stop 
one moment for reflection V Would it not be better for you to live ou terms of equal- 
ity and friendship with those who were once your brethren at the South'? Can you 
show in what particular, England, after she, through your instrumentality, has disrupt- 
ed this Union, wiil be benefited by trading with you? Are you not England's rivals 
for most of the goods sold in the States ? She, you declare by your tariff' bill, can 
manufacture the articles which we consume thirty-five per cent, cheaper, on an aver- 
age, than you can ; and hence you, by that bill, will compe] us to give you thirty-five 
cents in every dollar, to enable you to meet her at your own fectories. 

If this tax should be continued in our new confederacy, the trade of England will 
be no more restricted than it is now. How will it be with you? Instead of receiving 
the thirty-five per cent, which you propose to give yourselves in this new tariff, you 
will have to pay that much duty. Thus, you will receive on all goods sold at the 
South thirty-five cents in every dollar less than you would receive if you had not de- 
stroyed the Union. We, then, being now the consumers of the northern manufac- 
tures, and the North no longer being protected in our markets, she will be driven 
to abandon manufactures only for the northern States, except such as those where 
the cost of raw material constitutes the chief element of its manufacture. This is 
shown more conclusively in a correct analysis of the elements constituting the cost 
of manufacture. 

In all manufactures the elements of cost are thus enumerated and classified; first, 
the wages of labor ; second, the interest on capital; and third, the value of the raw 
material — labor forty per cent. ; capital fifty per cent. ; and the raw material ten 
per cent. This, I beheve is found correct, -except in coarse ftibries. In such the 
raw material enters as the chief element of co.st, as in coarse cotton. Our factories 
having the advantage of ten per cent, in the cost of cotton, can, for this reason, clothe 
the operatives in the English factories; for in such a fabric, the raw material consti- 
tutes a very great part of its value. 

The English manufacturers pay but half what we pay for labor and capital; and 
those two elements constitute ninety per cent, in cost of the fabrics sent here. You 
of the North cannot compete with them. It is thus that you lose and England gains 
by your folly. Again ; you can never induce England to remain hostile to the South, 
because she is dependent on the South. From her trade with the South she derives 
annually an income of more than six hundred million, besides giving employment to 
millions of her starving population. What does she derive fiom the export trade of 
thc^orth? hot one cent ; because it is all consumed. Herbiead, when there is a 
lailuie in Europe of crops, she sometimes gets fioni your ports. This is all. This 
does not constitute a basis of trade ; because it is consumed, and, hence, no source of 
income. 

We at the South understand the strength of .our position. The step we are about 
to take is not one of our own choosing, but from necessity. That necessity you have 
created, against our repeated protests, as well as against our threats. You have not 
heeded our solemn protests, and you have laughed to scorn our threats. As you have 
scorned our threats, so we now .scorn yours, and we defy your power. 

Do not, I implore you, suppose that Virginia will submit to oppression. She loves 
this Union, and will sacrifice all, except her honor and the liberties of her people, to 
preserve it. You now assail both. She has called her young men and her old men 
together around the council board. They have left their swords at home, because 
their presence sometimes engenders strife. 

They want peace, and not war ; but if you do not acknowledge the sovereignty of 
Virginia, and the ef[uaiity of her people, you will find them, too, on the war path. 



Printed by F. H. Sage, Washington, D. C. 



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